Behavioral evidence for a functional link between low- and mid-level visual perception in the autism spectrum

Perreault, Audrey; Habak, Claudine; Leporé, Franco; Mottron, Laurent; Bertone, Armando

doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2015.09.022

Cited by 10 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 64 publications

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“…We did not find this to be the case, as the Original GeoPref test that paired individual children dancing and dynamic geometric images elicited similar or even slightly larger differences between diagnostic groups than the current Complex Social GeoPref test. Alternately, other variables that differ between the Original and Complex Social stimuli, such as salience of biological motion, temporal dynamics of vignettes unfolding, or the overall length, or perhaps differences in low-level visual properties influencing salience (e.g., color or contrast), may account for this finding [ 66 , 67 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The geometric preference subtype in ASD: identifying a consistent, early-emerging phenomenon through eye tracking

et al. 2018

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BackgroundThe wide range of ability and disability in ASD creates a need for tools that parse the phenotypic heterogeneity into meaningful subtypes. Using eye tracking, our past studies revealed that when presented with social and geometric images, a subset of ASD toddlers preferred viewing geometric images, and these toddlers also had greater symptom severity than ASD toddlers with greater social attention. This study tests whether this “GeoPref test” effect would generalize across different social stimuli.MethodsTwo hundred and twenty-seven toddlers (76 ASD) watched a 90-s video, the Complex Social GeoPref test, of dynamic geometric images paired with social images of children interacting and moving. Proportion of visual fixation time and number of saccades per second to both images were calculated. To allow for cross-paradigm comparisons, a subset of 126 toddlers also participated in the original GeoPref test. Measures of cognitive and social functioning (MSEL, ADOS, VABS) were collected and related to eye tracking data. To examine utility as a diagnostic indicator to detect ASD toddlers, validation statistics (e.g., sensitivity, specificity, ROC, AUC) were calculated for the Complex Social GeoPref test alone and when combined with the original GeoPref test.ResultsASD toddlers spent a significantly greater amount of time viewing geometric images than any other diagnostic group. Fixation patterns from ASD toddlers who participated in both tests revealed a significant correlation, supporting the idea that these tests identify a phenotypically meaningful ASD subgroup. Combined use of both original and Complex Social GeoPref tests identified a subgroup of about 1 in 3 ASD toddlers from the “GeoPref” subtype (sensitivity 35%, specificity 94%, AUC 0.75.) Replicating our previous studies, more time looking at geometric images was associated with significantly greater ADOS symptom severity.ConclusionsRegardless of the complexity of the social images used (low in the original GeoPref test vs high in the new Complex Social GeoPref test), eye tracking of toddlers can accurately identify a specific ASD “GeoPref” subtype with elevated symptom severity. The GeoPref tests are predictive of ASD at the individual subject level and thus potentially useful for various clinical applications (e.g., early identification, prognosis, or development of subtype-specific treatments).Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s13229-018-0202-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The geometric preference subtype in ASD: identifying a consistent, early-emerging phenomenon through eye tracking

et al. 2018

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“…There are practical implications of this work for the study of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and the broader autism phenotype. Children and adolescents with a diagnosis of ASD have been found to show reduced sensitivity to continuous contour RF3 patterns but equivalent sensitivity to RF10 patterns compared to typically developing controls (Grinter, Maybery, Pellicano, et al, 2010;Perreault, Habak, Lepore, Mottron, & Bertone, 2015).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dissociation of local and global contributions to detection of shape with age.

Cribb¹,

Badcock²,

Maybery³

et al. 2016

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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Radial Frequency (RF) patterns are a useful stimulus for assessing sensitivity to changes in shape. With these patterns it is possible to separate sensitivity to local curvature information from the ability to globally integrate information around the contour. Previous work has demonstrated that young, school-age children are less sensitive to deformation in RF patterns than adults. However, since the efficiency of contour integration was not assessed, age-related differences in performance could arise from either changes in the strength of global pooling of information, the sensitivity to local curvature information, or both. In this study, psychophysical methods were used to reassess changes in sensitivity to RF patterns, separating changes in sensitivity to local curvature information from changes in contour integration strength. Typically developing observers (aged 6-24, N = 104) were tested using a 2-alternative forced-choice discrimination task with either 1, 2 or 3 cycles of sinusoidal modulation in a pattern of fixed RF. Thresholds were lower for older observers but the rate of change, as more modulation cycles were added, was approximately constant across age. The results indicate that changes in sensitivity to RF3 patterns across age are due to changes in local curvature sensitivity and not to the strength of contour integration. (PsycINFO Database Record

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“…However, individuals with autism show superior performance on local, detail‐focused tasks, and poorer processing for more holistic or global processing. One example of this is that they are more accurate and show faster reaction times for identifying local features and are less accurate and slower at identifying global features within the same image (Shah & Frith, ; Jolliffe & Baron‐Cohen, ; Happé, ; Perreault et al ., ). Similarly, motion sensitivity is normal in autism, but inferior when recognising human motion, which is associated with decreased functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) responses in visual area MT (Kaiser & Shiffrar, ).…”

Section: Visionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Variable sensory perception in autism

Haigh

2017

Eur J of Neuroscience

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Autism is associated with sensory and cognitive abnormalities. Individuals with autism generally show normal or superior early sensory processing abilities compared to healthy controls, but deficits in complex sensory processing. In the current opinion paper, it will be argued that sensory abnormalities impact cognition by limiting the amount of signal that can be used to interpret and interact with environment. There is a growing body of literature showing that individuals with autism exhibit greater trial-to-trial variability in behavioural and cortical sensory responses. If multiple sensory signals that are highly variable are added together to process more complex sensory stimuli, then this might destabilise later perception and impair cognition. Methods to improve sensory processing have shown improvements in more general cognition. Studies that specifically investigate differences in sensory trial-to-trial variability in autism, and the potential changes in variability before and after treatment, could ascertain if trial-to-trial variability is a good mechanism to target for treatment in autism.

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Behavioral evidence for a functional link between low- and mid-level visual perception in the autism spectrum

Cited by 10 publications

References 64 publications

The geometric preference subtype in ASD: identifying a consistent, early-emerging phenomenon through eye tracking

The geometric preference subtype in ASD: identifying a consistent, early-emerging phenomenon through eye tracking

Dissociation of local and global contributions to detection of shape with age.

Variable sensory perception in autism

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